Helping You Figure Out Local SEO With These Simple Tips

Written by: Jason Bayless | May 20, 2017

It’s no secret: if you want your business to be successful in this day and age, your business needs to have a good local ranking in Google searches. But, with search analytics changing every year, how can your business accomplish this?

We’ve listed a few tips to help you start to dominate your local SEO; it will help both current and prospective customers find your business.

1. Choosing the Right Keywords

Check your Google analytics to see what search terms your customers are using to find your site. For example, if you owned a bakery in Ft. Lauderdale, your customers will most likely use a search term such as “Ft. Lauderdale bakeries”.

But (and here comes the fun part), when you start thinking outside of the box, you can also focus on phrases like “fresh bread in Ft. Lauderdale””, etc. Brainstorm a list of phrases and industry terms that will lead customers to your business’s website.

2. Location

Improved location detection has finally made it possible for relevant local businesses to show up on a Google search. This means you should also focus on SEO phrases that contain your city or state.

Your search results are also influenced by the inclusion of the following three elements:

Your business’s name

Your address

Your phone number

These elements often referred to as your “NAP” should be included in your website’s footer (where nearly all browsers will look for this information). Making sure this information is consistent (and updated) throughout the pages of your website is one of the best ways to improve your local SEO.

3. Using Modifiers to Your Advantage

Remember what we said about using search terms to your advantage? Well, you can also use local SEO tactics to make your business show up at the top of the list for “”best bakery in Ft. Lauderdale”.

4. Using Your Own Email Address

Despite Gmail being a Google service, search results still favor businesses that have their own domain name in their primary email address (for example “”bakery@ftlauderdalebakery.com, as opposed to bakery@gmail.com).

5. Choosing the Right Category

In the simplest terms, when you’re picking your business’s category for search results, you should describe the kind of business you are, and not the services or products you provide. (For example, you would use a generic term like “Bakery” instead of “Fresh bread and pie”.)

It sounds like a simple change, but we’ve seen clients’ results improve by five or six positions just by improving their Category’s accuracy.

Key Takeaways

It’s easier than you might think to implement these local SEO changes–it’s simply a matter of:

Ensuring your Name, Address, and Phone number are consistent and included in the footer of your website

While these tips will get you up and running, the world of SEO is constantly changing as Google updates its search analytics. A good and continued understanding of these changes is one of the best ways to help your business.